PARALLEL PROGRAM CITY TERRITORY. ART MADRID'25

VIDEO CYCLE: CARTOGRAPHIES OF PERCEPTION

In its 20th edition, Art Madrid dedicates its Parallel Program to the exploration of the relationship between man, architecture, city and landscape. Under the title Cartographies of Perception, this section, curated by PROYECTOR's Moving Image platform, presents a selection of international video art works that address these interactions from a contemporary and critical perspective. PROYECTOR, a reference platform for the moving image, invites us to participate in an experience in which time, space and perception converge on the screen.

The collection presented this year proposes a reflection on the relationship between man and his environment, on the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, and on the tensions between the natural and the constructed. As quoted by the critic John Berger: "Art is a way of seeing, a constant discovery". The selected works are not only vehicles of plastic beauty, but also invitations to discover new ways of observing, questioning, and possessing a representation of the world..

In this conceptual journey, The Divine Way by Ilaria Di Carlo evokes the labyrinthine descent inspired by the Divine Comedy, where the stairs mutate into metaphors of psychological and architectural transit.

Imitación a la vida by Juan Carlos Bracho, on the other hand, uses a monumental mirror to explore the landscape as a reflection and the image as a bottomless pit, questioning our perception of our surroundings.

In the arid desert of the dry lake El Mirage, Lukas Marxt inscribes a spiral with a vehicle in his work Circular Inscription, paying homage to Land Art while questioning the human imprint on the landscape.

Magda Gebhardt's performance Atlas carries the symbolic weight of the world as she constructs and destroys landscapes that defy notions of time and space, exposing the artifice inherent in the image.

The introspective journey of Yuchi Hsiao in Somewhere I Belong to Be uses toy cars moving across her face to symbolize a personal transition, while lololol's Wafer Bearer Deep Rain explores the relationship between technology and everyday life in Taiwan, the epicenter of global semiconductor production.

Finally, Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre by Tezi Gabunia offers a disturbing vision of the flooded museum, anticipating the impact of climate change on cultural heritage.

Each work in this selection offers poetic and philosophical views of life and invites collectors to own a piece of this conceptual journey. By acquiring these works, they become custodians of stories and visions that reflect and challenge our understanding of the contemporary world.

ABOUT THE ARTWORKS AND ARTISTS

The Divine Way. Ilaria Di Carlo. 15:00. 2018. 2K color.

The Divine Way. 15:00. 2018. 2K color

The Divine Way, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, accompanies the protagonist on a labyrinthine descent through an endless series of staircases. Each step reveals an architectural and psychological mutation, transforming the landscape into a visual and emotional trap. Winner of dozens of international awards, this work is a monumental journey into the unknown.

Ilaria Di Carlo. Courtesy of the artist.

llaria Di Carlo

Ilaria Di Carlo (Lazio, 1981) is a visual artist whose practice combines film, scenography, installation and performing arts. Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and with a master's degree in scenography from Central Saint Martin's College in London, she also studied digital film production in Berlin. His work explores travel, identity and their relationship to landscape and architecture, using a visual aesthetic inspired by scenography. His short films have been awarded and exhibited internationally, including his outstanding work The Divine Way. Based in Berlin, she continues to work as a set designer, director and actress in experimental theater projects.

Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre. Tezi Gabunia. 3:02. 2018-20. 2K color.

Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre. 3:02. 2018-20. 2K color

The flooding of the Louvre Museum speaks about news culture and our fluctuating perception of disasters as seen through the media. The scale of the disaster is often difficult to assess from news coverage. In the work “Breaking News”, the flood slowly enters the room of the Louvre, allowing the viewer to gradually witness the destruction of the interior. It brings the viewer shockingly close to what has not happened but easily could have; the viewer sees the before-and-after effect in a highly visualized manner, which is as convincing and threatening as it is fake. The artwork presents a scoop—a situation where information, as a spectacle, surpasses the terrifying nature of catastrophe and where the real event is abolished. Is information a new type of reality? Is it possible to truly cover real events? These issues arise during the encounter between two situations: the destruction of art artifacts and the spectacular nature of this process.

Tezi Gabunia. Foto de Giorgi Nakashidze. Courtesy of the artist.

Tezi Gabunia

Tezi Gabunia (Tbilisi, 1987) is an artist and architect who graduated from Tbilisi University and is known for her systematic approach to exploring cultural manipulation through various media. Winner of the 2016 Tsinandali Visual Arts Award for her project Put your Head into Gallery, her work has been exhibited internationally in cities such as Batumi, Vienna, Krakow, and New York. Highlights include participation in the Story as a Woven Carpet collective in Berlin and presentation in the Focus section of the 2020 Armory Show.

Circular inscription. Lukas Marxt. 6:50. 2016. 2K color.

Circular Inscription. 6:50. 2016. 2K color

In the desert landscape of dry lake El Mirage, a car circles incessantly, leaving indelible marks on the surface. The work is both an homage to 1960s Land Art and a reflection on human intervention in the landscape. The marks on the ground evoke works such as Smithson's Spiral Jetty, translating the monumentality of the land into the space of video art.

Lukas Marxt. Courtesy of the artist.

Lukas Marxt

Lukas Marxt (Austria, 1983) is an artist and filmmaker who explores the interaction between human and geological existence as well as the impact of humans on nature. Trained in geography and environmental sciences, he completed his audiovisual studies in Linz and holds a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Cologne. His work, which has been exhibited in museums such as the Torrance Art Museum and the Biennale of Painting in Belgium, combines visual art and film. His films have been screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, Locarno and Gijón, where he was awarded the Principality of Asturias Prize. Since 2017, he has been researching the ecological dynamics of the Salton Sea in California.

Imitation of Life. Juan Carlos Bracho. 20:46 2017 HD color.

Imitation of Life. Juan Carlos Bracho. 20:46 2017 HD color.

A large-format mirror and the act of erasing its surface become a performative meditation on image, landscape, and perception. Bracho confronts the viewer with the illusory nature of images, questioning whether we are critical thinkers or merely hypnotized consumers. This single-shot narrative reveals a world where the image transforms into a plastic and mutable entity.

Juan Carlos Bracho. Courtesy of the artist.

Juan Carlos Bracho

Juan Carlos Bracho (Cádiz, 1970) explores space, drawing as a cartographic tool, and the circularity of contemporary creativity. His work is based on small, repetitive gestures that generate powerful sensory images, transforming apparent monotony into evocative scenographies. Through systematic actions and minimal graphic elements, he reflects on the consolidation of images, landscape as symbolic transformation, and aesthetic experience as catharsis. His practice encompasses video, photography, installation, performance, sculpture, and drawing, with projects that continuously interact, creating a narrative of parallel mirrors and infinite escapes.

Atlas. Magda Gebhardt. 6:12. 2012. HD B/N.

Atlas. 6:12. 2012. HD B/N

Like the mythological Titan, Gebhardt bears the weight of the world in a continuous process of creating and destroying landscapes. The performance redefines notions of time and space, exposes the artifice of both landscape and image, and positions the viewer as the central axis from which perception is structured.

Magda Gebhardt. Courtesy of the artist.

Magda Gebhardt

Magda Gebhardt (Porto Alegre, 1981). She graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Lyon. She is a painter and professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure D'architecture in Paris-Malaquais, where she currently lives and works.

Wafer Bearer Deep Rain.lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung). 12:00. 2022. 4K color.

Wafer Bearer Deep Rain. 12:00. 2022. 4K color

Exploring the interaction between technology and everyday life, this work analyzes the natural and industrial phenomena of Taiwan as the epicenter of global semiconductor production. Through a multi-narrative video, it establishes a poetic and critical relationship between technical objects and human beings.

lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung). Courtesy of the artists.

lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung)

Founded in 2013 by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung, lolololol is a Taiwanese art collective that explores how emotions and body politics are shaped by technological cultures, martial arts, and ontological materialism. Their approach combines Asian philosophy and mind-body practices as alternative ways of investigating the interaction between humans and technology. In 2020 they founded Future Tao, an artistic platform for collective collaborations. Their projects have been presented at prestigious festivals and museums such as Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (UK), Taipei Arts Festival, Times Museum (China) and Liquid Architecture (Australia).

Somewhere I belong to be.Yuchi Hsiao. 3:31. 2017.

Somewhere I belong to be. 3:31. 2017

This work explores emotional release through a slow, symbolic gesture. A toy car runs across the artist's face as his hands reach out of the frame, reflecting the act of letting go of what is holding him back. The tension between retention and transformation is materialised in the subtle tugging of the car on his hair. The action becomes a visual metaphor for letting go of the past and embarking on a new path.

Yuchi Hsiao. Courtesy of the artist.

Yuchi Hsiao

Yuchi Hsiao (Kaohsiung, 1986) is an artist specialising in video art and installation, with a Master's degree in New Media Art from the National Taipei University of the Arts. Her work explores the relationship between the individual and her environment, focusing on the unusual events of everyday life and projecting intimate emotions from personal spaces such as her bedroom. Hsiao combines textiles and second-hand clothing with video works to expand reflections on the mind and everyday life. His work has been exhibited internationally in France, Bulgaria, Macau and at the Nakanojo Biennale in Japan.

The Video Cycle Cartographies of Perception will be shown in the Espacio Tectónica (stand D2) during the week of the fair. The cycle, curated by PROYECTOR's Moving Image platform, deals with migration and the relationship between peripheries and urban centres, examining the city as a complex organism, at once a labyrinth and a Tower of Babel. Through video, the artists reflect on the role of the individual in the transformation of architectural space and the dynamics of feedback in an interconnected world, inviting viewers to expand their perception of the spaces they inhabit. In this dialogue between image and territory, Cartographies of Perception maps other fragmented realities and opens up a space for questioning and critical sensitivity, where the gaze becomes the first step towards a new understanding of our surroundings.

LECTURAS. CURATED WALKTHROUGHS BY ART MADRID'26

Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs by Art Madrid’26 is a cultural mediation initiative designed to bring audiences closer to the exhibitions presented by the participating galleries in this edition. Its aim is to transform the experience of the fair into an opportunity to reflect on the work of the artists featured, to analyze contemporary issues through their works, and to awaken new perspectives in society—thus fostering a critical and contextualized understanding of contemporary art as an instrument for cultural and social dialogue.

In this edition, art historians and cultural communicators Zuriñe Lafón and Marisol Salanova will address, from complementary approaches, diverse perspectives on contemporary creation and its impact within today’s social context.

Each thematic walkthrough will be structured around a carefully curated selection of ten works, accompanied by a solid curatorial discourse aimed at deepening their analysis, context, and significance. Beyond aesthetic contemplation, these guided visits will promote a critical understanding of contemporary art, facilitating direct dialogue between the audience and the curators, and encouraging a participatory and enriching experience.

With this third edition, Lecturas: Curated Walkthroughs x Art Madrid consolidates Art Madrid’s commitment to cultural mediation and the dissemination of contemporary art, offering an immersive proposal that expands interpretative frameworks and fosters the inclusion of new audiences within today’s artistic landscape.

CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE VISIBLE. CURATED WALKTHROUGH BY ZURIÑE LAFÓN

Constructions of the Visible proposes a journey shaped by one central idea: every image is a way of organizing the visible. Rather than understanding abstraction as a withdrawal from the world and figuration as fidelity to reality, this itinerary presents both as perceptual strategies. They are not opposing styles, but different ways of ordering experience. Each artist deploys a distinct strategy that affects our way of looking. Through framing, color, repetition, geometry, or fragmentation, the works do not merely show something; they position us within a particular mode of relating to the visible. They do not simply represent the world—they construct an experience from it.

As the viewer moves through the selection, they encounter different intensities of mediation. Some pieces begin with recognizable images—bodies, spaces, scenes—that appear to offer a direct relationship with reality. Yet as the gaze lingers, it becomes evident that this familiarity is carefully articulated. The rhythm of forms, the distribution of color, the organization of space, or the repetition of certain elements reveal that even the most seemingly transparent image is sustained by an underlying structure.

Other works, by contrast, reduce or transform figurative reference almost to the point of dissolution. Where the recognizable world appears to disappear, the constructive dimension of the image emerges forcefully. Geometry, gesture, or chromatic vibration do not function as an escape from reality, but as intensified forms of the world’s own appearance. Abstraction ceases to be perceived as distance and instead manifests as another way of sustaining reality—of making it appear under different conditions.

The walkthrough adopts a circular structure: it begins and concludes with the same work. This gesture does not seek repetition, but transformation. After passing through different works, different configurations of the visible—from the recognizable to the apparently abstract—the initial image can no longer be read as a faithful representation of reality. It is revealed as yet another construction within a broad field of perceptual possibilities. What changes is not the work itself, but our position before it. Looking ceases to be a passive act and becomes an active practice, an exercise in relation.

As Andrea Soto Calderón suggests, images do not merely reflect the world: they make it appear. From this perspective, the fair may be understood as a micro-cartography of ways of seeing, a space in which each work proposes a singular form of perceptual experience. The visible is not a stable datum or a neutral surface, but a process in constant elaboration, renewed in the encounter between artwork and viewer.

Constructions of the Visible does not propose a closed classification, but an invitation: to pause, to question appearances, and at the same time to allow oneself to be affected by the creative power of forms. In the movement between figuration and abstraction, we discover that every image is an operation—a way of ordering experience. The walkthrough invites us to assume this perceptual responsibility and to recognize that reality is not simply there: it is constructed in every act of creation.

SELECTION OF GALLERIES AND ARTISTS:

Ana Cardoso — Galeria São Mamede. Antonio Barahona — Galería María Aguilar. Leticia Feduchi — Galería Sigüenza. Joost Vandebrug — Kant Gallery. Beatriz Castela —Galería Beatriz Pereira. Fernando Mikelarena— Kur Art Gallery. Camil Giralt — Pigment Gallery. Virginia Rivas — Galería Beatriz Pereira. Miguel Piñeiro — Moret Art. Maria Svarbova — Galería BAT alberto cornejo.

ABOUT ZURIÑE LAFÓN

Zuriñe Lafón. Courtesy of the curator.

Zuriñe Lafón (1987) holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from the University of Navarra with the dissertation Francisco Calvo Serraller, Art Critic. Since 2015 she has devoted herself to research and teaching in Visual Culture, delivering courses such as Visual Culture, Photojournalism, Editorial Design, Foundational Texts on Photography, Digital Media Editing, and Fashion and Artistic Movements. She has taught at the University of Navarra, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, UNIR, and the University of Montevideo. She has also worked in cultural departments of institutions such as El Correo Bilbao and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.

Through her project Atelier de imágenes, she shares research and outreach on contemporary images, creating a space dedicated to reflecting on painting, photography, and cinema. She is currently writing the book Uninhabiting the Frame, a research project on the ontology of photography through selected photographic archives of women in Spain.

“THE PREDOMINANCE OF BRILLIANT AESTHETICS”. CURATED WALKTHROUGH BY MARISOL SALANOVA

Framed by the theme “The Predominance of Brilliant Aesthetics”, this selection brings together works that understand brilliance not as superficiality, but rather as visual strategy, as contemporary seduction, as a symptom of an era that requires impact, color, polish, and perhaps at times certain excesses in order to think (itself).

This proposal, in which works of different formats and techniques coexist and are created by artists from various generations, opens a debate aimed at better understanding our present aesthetic condition—one in which the public is invited to participate.

Marisol Salanova approaches brilliant aesthetics as a tension rather than a closed solution. In the works of Urdiales and Celada, brilliance appears as an internal conflict within pictorial language; in Monge and Okuda, so different from one another, as a direct spectacularization of space and the urban imaginary; in Juncal, Rivas, and Alpuente, as a fragile balance between material and perception; and in Palito Dominguín, as an iconographic and symbolic affirmation, almost performative in nature. What particularly interests the curator and critic about this group is that brilliant aesthetics is not perceived as unified, but fragmented—at times ironic, at times ornamental, at times almost violent; elsewhere softened or symbolic. It is not an innocent brilliance: it seduces, imposes, distracts, and orders the gaze, much like the visual ecosystem in which we live today.

SELECTION OF ARTISTS AND GALLERIES:

Eduardo Urdiales — Inéditad Gallery. Arol — Est_ArtSpace. Perrilla — Est_ArtSpace. Ángel Celada — Galería BAT alberto cornejo. Antonio Ovejero — CLC Arte. Alejandro Monge — 3 Punts Galería. Okuda San Miguel — 3 Punts Galería. Steen Ipsen — Kant Gallery. Marina Puche — Galería Alba Cabrera. Marcos Juncal— Galería La Mercería. Gemma Alpuente — LAVIO. Palito Dominguín — DDR Art Gallery.

ABOUT MARISOL SALANOVA

Marisol Salanova. Foto de Bertha Delgado.

Marisol Salanova is an art critic, exhibition curator, and director of the platform Arteinformado. She is a regular contributor to ABC and Cadena Ser. She holds a degree in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Artistic Production. She has taught at university level and has published essays such as Art Criticism Today (Akal, 2024).